When I fly above the town at night, all is still and the windows in the houses and shops are blank with sleep. As I walk through the street this morning, crows from the castle squabble over crumbs outside the bakehouse and a ginger cat sits on Jones the Butcher’s windowsill and twitches his nose at the reek of hundreds of faggots cooking; Mam says everyone has faggots for their dinner on Saturday. Shop signs swing and squeak in the breeze and in the houses lace curtains twitch aside behind the windows as I pass by.
My fingers are sticky from Mam’s blackberry jam, which is runny and pippy unlike Nain’s jam. Mam says that eating in the street is common as dirt, but I escaped with my bread and jam before she came downstairs again.
Just as I lick my fingers Mr Pugh waves at me from behind his wide counter in Pugh’s Stores, where he’s framed by pyramids of tins full of food from faraway countries. Mr Pugh won’t tell Mam I’m being common as dirt. He often gives me chocolate biscuits from the broken-biscuit tin to eat in the street when I fetch the messages for Mam or Nain. But Mrs Llywelyn Pugh would probably tell her. Mrs Llywelyn Pugh never, ever serves in the shop and she wears a dead fox around her neck to go to Chapel. Whenever I mention the dead fox Mam says: Don’t be silly, Gwenni; it’s not a dead fox, it’s a fox-fur. Mrs Llywelyn Pugh sits two pews in front of us in Chapel and the dead fox’s paws and head loll on her back and its glass eyes stare and stare at me.
As I walk up the hill I see the glint of spectacles above the cream lace in Kitty Hawk’s parlour window. Alwenna always says: Let’s give her something to look at. So on Sundays, when she wears stockings, she lifts her skirt and fiddles with her suspenders. Every Monday morning Kitty Hawk hovers above her front step and squawks at Mam on her way to clean the Police House: That Alwenna has no shame.
In my sleep I fly from the bottom of the hill up over the Baptism Pool in no time at all; it takes me longer to walk here. Alwenna says the Scotch Baptists from Rehoboth Chapel dress in white sheets and their minister throws them into the water of the Baptism Pool, and then they’re baptised.
Last night the Pool was full of water, the way it is in winter, when I saw the man floating on it. His arms and legs were spread out like a cross and his white shirt ballooned on the surface. But it was his moonshiny eyes that scared me into falling. Was it a drowned Baptist? Or a Baptist’s spirit? Do spirits float?
I make my eyes into slits to look into the Baptism Pool. There’s no one in there. Maybe there are things I can see only when I’m flying. The railings around the Pool’s edges are rough with rust that rubs off on my mackintosh when I lean over them. The Pool has lost its winter water and looks like the swamp in a film that Alwenna and I went to see in the picture house. I had nightmares afterwards that woke everyone, even Bethan, and Mam said: I must have my beauty sleep, Gwenni. The water in the Pool smells worse than Jones the Butcher’s faggots. It’s lucky I’m a Methodist and not a Scotch Baptist.
The sun sneaks from behind a cloud; I close my eyes and lift my face to it. Its big yellow eye looks right through me. What does the sun see? Does it see the same things as I do when I’m flying?
I wonder what time it is. If I were a castaway like Robinson Crusoe I would be able to tell the time by the sun.
Robinson Crusoe could have escaped from his desert island if he’d been able to fly. When I was little and wanted to fly I would crouch down and wrap my arms around my knees, like this, and then I would lift above the ground and skim over it. Fly, I say to myself now. Fly, fly, fly. But it won’t happen. All I do is fall over. If I were a lizard on Robinson Crusoe’s island I could stay here all day basking in the sun’s warmth; I wouldn’t have to go to Brwyn Coch and see Ifan Evans with his raw face and his eyes that are dark and sour as sloes. When I told Mam and Tada that Alwenna calls him Paleface, Tada laughed until Mam frowned at him. That Alwenna has no shame, she said.
Look, the primroses on the bank at the side of the road are open and tiny violets hide their heads in the grass beside them. I’ll pick some primroses for Mam on the way back and I’ll pick a posy of violets now to take to Mrs Evans. Mrs Evans likes violets; she read a poem to us in an English lesson at primary school about a girl as shy as a violet, and once she made fairy cakes for a chapel supper that had pretty sugared violets on the icing. I can taste them now, sweet and scented and fizzy on my tongue. A posy of violets will cheer her up before she goes to Price the Dentist.
Mr Price took out all Mam’s bottom teeth when I was five. She came home and sat on the step at the foot of the stairs and whimpered with pain, a handkerchief of Tada’s pressed to her mouth and soaked with blood. Alwenna says that Mr Price has to have a glass of whisky to steady his hands before he takes your teeth out; that’s why his breath smells so sweet. Tada says it’s worth the pain, he says his false teeth are much better than the real thing.
Deep down where the stems of the violets leave the ground the grass is cool and wet. I tease several of the flowers from the bank and some of their true-hearted leaves to put about them, and then tie the stems around and around with a long blade of grass to make a posy.
When I look up the Reservoir walls loom at me from the other side of the road. Last summer a dead sheep lay in the Reservoir for weeks before anyone found it. Alwenna says that maggots came through the taps in her house. My stomach shifts at the thought of it.
There’s Mrs Williams talking to Guto’r Wern at the house gate to Penrhiw farm. Alwenna says everyone knows that Guto’s mother dropped him on his head when he was a baby so that he grew up strange. And now his mother’s dead and he can’t look after himself although he’s a grown man. Once, Guto told me he could fly, and he tried to show me how, but it didn’t work. Mam says I’m not to encourage him but Tada always says: There’s no harm in him, he’s innocent as a child. Mrs Williams waves me over to her; Guto waves, too, the torn sleeve of his coat flapping up and down, up and down, like a crow’s wing. Mrs Williams gives him a little push and he moves away, eating the bread and butter she’s given him. We both watch him hop and skip down the road to the town.
‘That poor boy,’ says Mrs Williams. ‘I don’t know what’ll become of him.’ She turns back to me. ‘So, Gwenni, are you off to Brwyn Coch this morning? Elin mentioned that she was having a tooth out. And how’s your nain? I haven’t seen her for weeks. Don’t tell me, I know what she’d say: Mustn’t grumble, Bessie. That’s what your nain always says, bless her: Mustn’t grumble. Tell her I’ve been churning butter and I’ve got plenty of buttermilk. She likes her buttermilk, I know. You look more like her every time I see you. How time flies. Last time I saw your Aunty Olwen was when the Silver Band came round playing at Christmas. Must be a bit noisy for your nain to live with that trumpet. Are those flowers for Elin? Don’t stand there with your mouth open, Gwenni. You’re probably late already. You’d better run the rest of the way.’
Alwenna says that Mr Williams winds his wife up every morning; she says you can tell by the way Mrs Williams talks more slowly in the afternoons and has nothing at all to say by evening. When I told Mam she said: Don’t be silly, Gwenni.
The gate to Brwyn Coch’s field opens with a groan, as if it doesn’t want to let me by. When I step into the long grass, I feel the wet seeping in through the sides of my shoes. I’ve forgotten to put my Wellington boots on. The lambs run away, bleating for their mothers, and their silly tails wobble behind them. Tada says Ifan Evans is good at his job, he says that Twm Edwards is lucky to have a man so useful with the sheep. Alwenna says that’s because Paleface likes anything female. When I told Mam her hands shook so much she dropped her Woman’s Weekly. That Alwenna has no shame, she said.
The sun has vanished again but it’s not raining, so I’ll take the children outside to play. Why is there no smoke coming from Brwyn Coch’s chimney? Has Mrs Evans left already and taken Angharad and Catrin with her? Mam will be cross with me.
I knock on the heavy front door. Mot starts barking around the side of the house; he doesn’t run at me so he must be tied up. Does that mean Ifan Evans hasn’t gone to see to the lambs yet? I can hear the geese honking in their pen behind the house but I can’t hear the sound of people. As I lift my arm to knock again the door swings open. Mrs Evans stands in the doorway with her apron held up over her mouth. Blood seeps through the apron onto her hands. She looks like Mam looked when she sat, all blood and tears, at the bottom of the stairs. Mrs Evans’s eyes are full of pain and her hair is coming loose from its silver combs.
‘Oh, Mrs Evans,’ I say, ‘you’ve been to Mr Price already, I’m sorry I’m late, Mam’ll be so cross with me.’ I hold the posy of violets out towards her bloodied hands. ‘I stopped to pick these for you.’